Map and assess your process

Begin the mapping and assessment process by clearly defining the scope of your evaluation. Determine a specific area of focus within your organization that aligns with your goals or addresses a particular need. To identify this area, consider the aspects of your organizational processes you wish to re-evaluate or improve
If you are still having trouble identifying an area, it might help to ask yourself: Do you have a clear understanding of your users and their experiences? Is that information meaningfully informing your organizational goals and efforts? If not, why not? These questions may give you some clarity on where you might want to build your capacity.

Once you have established your area of focus, list out all the activities involved. You can include as many or as few activities as you need, but make sure it is an exhaustive list of everything your organization does within that area of focus.

Examples of Related Activities

Do you need help determining your key task?
If you need help determining what that might be, take the capacity assessment below.

Once you have determined your specific are of focus and listed out your related activities, you will conduct a deep dive of six key components for each activity.

Once you have identified the activity you will be diving into, the first step is to understand the processes within this activity. Engage the team members that work on this activity to collaboratively develop a  picture of what this activity consists of. All key members should have an input in this step in order to gain an accurate understanding of the processes for this activity.

For this exercise, there are three broad categories of processes to think about

Once you have considered the processes necessary to complete a target activity, consider which team members carry out the relevant responsibilities. Be open to the responsibilities your team actually takes on and not just the tasks they are instructed to do.

Ensure that this part of your mapping process accurately reflects your current state and not your planned state.
You may refer to the RACI matrix² to identify the key players in each identified process:

The RACI Matrix

The resources component of this exercise entails diving into the relevant materials that your organization has to support the different processes of the activity and how you are using them. These may include materials actively used, not utilized sufficiently, or not utilized at all. 

Below are a few examples of the kinds of resources you can consider during this exercise:

Organizations use technology in one form or another in their processes. This part of mapping is about making the tools you use operationally explicit, ranging from simple ones (like word processors and spreadsheets) to complicated ones (like customer relationship management tools and other dashboards). 

Identify the tools your staff use in the various processes of completing an activity.

Any activity that your organization does can be measured in different ways. These metrics help follow an activity’s performance over time, and can support your organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs) that are used to gauge progress. To learn more about metrics and find some examples, check out our Establish Your Metrics tool. You may or may not already be tracking metrics across your processes. We designed this exercise to allow you to list what you are doing so you can identify what you can and should be monitoring. It is possible that there is information available that you haven’t identified as a metric yet — and are missing out on utilizing in a systematic way.

With this in mind, write down any type of data that is used to inform the processes necessary to complete the activity in the boxes below:

Throughout the mapping and assessment of the process(es) of your target activity, you may have had discovered changes necessary to refine or streamline the process. Use this opportunity to also explore changes you had not considered but want to.

Begin your exploration by freeing yourself from any restrictions you may have. Craft an ambitious plan — you can always narrow it down later. Throughout this exercise it is important that you document any and all changes to your processes that you believe would benefit your organization.

Here are examples of brainstorming activities you can use to identify aspirational goals with your team members. Consider putting a time limit to your activity to encourage focus.

Examples of brainstorming activities

Mapping and assessing the processes of an activity is an integral step in capacity building. It provides a clear and accurate idea of the work that goes on behind the scenes to support the organization’s goals. 

By making this process explicit, it also becomes an opportunity to ideate changes or improvements that can help your organization grow. You can leverage the information from this exercise for strategic decision-making, optimizing workflows, and enhancing your organization’s capacity to pursue its goals.